blahflowers

Or was that Joss Whedon's 'Wants to Sell You His House'?

How much alcohol was drunk in that film? Seriously, almost every scene has at least one glass of something being drunk. They should have made it continuous so that by the end everyone is sailing three sheets to the Tony Stark...

LEONATO

So-so-so-so- wha' wos I sayin'?
so are the prince-guy and fuckin' Claudio, who accuserated her
abou' all the stuff you heard:
Madge wos in some messing all up in this
Although she is a hottie so screw it,
In de true course o' alllllll the question.

ANTONIO

I fuckin' love you all guys, come 'ere, big hug...

The one thing this does, which the few other adaptations I've seen of this don't do, is explicitly say that Benedick and Beatrice had some sort of relationship before he went off to war. It's only in the silent pre-credit scene, the sticking close to the text doesn't allow any other elaboration on what it is, so it's not clear about whether WesleyBenedick and FredBeatrice were having a one-night I-may-die-tomorrow hey-nonny-nonny or whether Benedick was using going to war to get out of a relationship that he was too immature to commit to. Either way I don't like this as it gives an unpleasant edge to Beatrice's attacks on Benedick, this time it's personal. In other versions their relationship plays as the 'love-masquerading-as-dislike' whereas here it's all about how that man done did her wrong. And why would she accept him at the end, he's charmed his way into her bed before, what proof has she got that he isn't just doing it again?

Amy Acker's pratfall down the stairs when she hears the maid and Hero discuss Benedick's love for her is beautiful.

So, Nathan Fillion's turn as Dogberry was a great shame. It just didn't work for me. I saw the film in a nearly empty theatre but while the scenes where Benedick and Beatrice run around listening to the others talking about them got laughs the scenes with Dogberry were received in silence. Admittedly he wasn't as annoying as Michael Keaton's weird grotesque in Kenneth Branagh's wonderful film but it just fell flat. Maybe light relief needs to done to an audience (John Ramm's Dogberry in the staged version with David Tennant and Catherine Tate was fantastic) but there was something in the delivery of the lines that it's not really clear to the audience that he's talking nonsense and dropping malapropisms all over the place. It's only really the moments of physical comedy with Tom Lenk as Verges that really work.

Something that's always disturbed me about the play is the bit where Beatrice and Benedick admit their feelings for one another and then Beatrice gets Benedick to swear to challenge Claudio to a duel to the death for his treatment of Hero. I mean, what the hell? At this point she is one of the very few that know that Hero is not dead and that the friar has some sort of plan but while I can understand that she feels extremely upset and even angry at Claudio for his behaviour and words towards her kinswoman wanting to actually kill him seems a little extreme. I can understand her wanting to pretend to be really angry in order to continue the masquerade but to go from that to "If you really loved me you'd bring me Claudio's still beating heart" is rather odd. What's her motivation, a final scene where she gets to announce "the good news is the bride isn't actually dead. The bad news is that Benedick killed the groom"? I can only assume that when writing it Shakespeare started that scene thinking he needed to give the other actors a chance to do costume changes and the like, got distracted half way through and went to the pub, came home drunk and dashed that half of the scene off, went to bed, woke up the next morning and went "what the hell did I write last night?" and forgot to rewrite it before the script went to the printers.

Otherwise it's a nice little film from Team Whedon.